Stretches (also called litters) are used to carry injured people to safety places where the carried person can receive medical or any other suitable treatment. The stretcher is typically designed to be carried by two people and therefore, usually includes a fabric sheet stretched over two parallel holding bars. Most modern stretchers include one or more security belts for securing the patient's body to the stretcher.
Stretchers used in ambulances include a mattress bed-like part connected to a foldable wheels structure that immediately opens once pulled from the ambulance allowing the paramedics to carry patients of various conditions and weights and through various surfaces relatively easily.
Portable stretchers, such as evacuation blankets, designed for traveling long distances and/or rough terrains, are light weighted and often can be folded to a fairly compact and comfortable size for easy carrying. To allow folding, portable stretchers often have telescopic stretcher-bars that can also be removed from the cloth connecting them so that the cloth can be folded in the traveler's bag and the bars collapse into a significantly smaller size.
In some medical cases the patient should be carried in a laying position where in other cases the patient should or can be carried in a sitting position or semi-sitting position. Evacuation blankets and/or evacuation harnesses or carriers allow rescuing of subjects from difficult locations requiring rescue vehicles such as helicopters and the like or require climbing facility and staff such as rescue through abseiling and the like. These rescue blankets include a sheet of fabric and often some handles attached thereto, where carriers such as back carriers can include straps through which the subject is harnessed to the rescuer or to a rope for lifting him/her to the helicopter or for carrying him/her through an abseiling rope.